Hanover Area plans tax hike, job cuts

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By Steve Mocarsky [email protected] Writer

HANOVER TWP. – The Hanover Area School Board on Thursday voted to approve a final budget proposal for the 2011-12 school year that includes a 0.9-mill property tax increase, curtails high school programs by eliminating positions for two industrial arts teachers, an art teacher, a French teacher and a social worker and closes Lyndwood Elementary.
The closure will allow the furlough of three teachers and two assistant principals.
But board members emphasized they will work to make more expenditure cuts before June 30 to further reduce or eliminate the tax hike.
Superintendent Anthony Podczasy said state law would allow the school board to raise taxes up to 4 mills with qualifying exceptions, but Thursday’s 8-1 vote basically created a ceiling for the highest possible tax hike that the board would impose – the 0.9-mill increase.
A mill is equal to $1 in tax for every $1,000 in assessed property value. So, without any further tax reduction, the tax bill for a home with an assessed value of $100,000 would increase $90. The 5.87-percent increase would bring the total millage rate to 16.2283, equating to a property tax of $1,622.83 on such a home.
Podczasy said the board started in December with a proposed budget of $28.3 million and, by February, reduced it to $27.3 million. In March, the board cut another $2.1 million, leaving a deficit of $1.4 million. The deficit grew to $2.77 million in April when Gov. Tom Corbett announced state funding cuts for education. Hanover Area’s cut was $1.36 million.
The board cut spending further, resulting in a $25.15 million budget for 2011-12, or $241,486 more than this year’s.
Podczasy said a third of the 0.9-mill tax increase will be used for debt payment, which increases from $724,350 to $3,180,965 next school year.
Resident Ed Mera chastised the school board for allowing debt to escalate. “Where are you in the hole $29 million?”
Board President John Pericci said previous school boards invested $19 million in infrastructure improvements to buildings constructed in the 1920s and 1930s. The additional $10 million was from interest expense. He said the $2.8 million that became due this year was no surprise, but he doesn’t think it “was planned for properly.”
Speaking as an advocate for the arts, Ron Simasek said it appeared that state law required that art and music “had to be taught” in the schools. Podczasy said that while state code requires instruction in the humanities, not all humanities had to be taught.
Lyndwood teacher Mary Ellen Fries asked if any faculty jobs could be saved if the teachers voted for a wage freeze.
Solicitor George Shovlin said the board is in discussions with the teachers union on that topic, but members were “not privy to discuss it.”
Pericci said the savings of a wage freeze would amount to about $445,000.
Parent Kim Linski asked what will happen to non-college prep students whose programs were cut. Podczasy said the students whose classes were eliminated would take more Internet, computer, music and state assessment test preparation classes.